The Official ArduCam OSD Board

Introduction and Features List

DIYDrone's ArduCam OSD board was projected to be a DIY board very hackable and customizable to provide OSD and USB host. And the best part: it already have an Arduino based circuitry controlling the dedicated chips and give you access to everything. I sent the Eagle schematics to my friend Jordi Munõz and he did all his magic of reduction, routing it to a tiny all-in-one board. The board has just: 56 x 34 x 10mm (W x L x D).

The ArduCam OSD project gives you all the basic resources to start adding OSD telemetry to your project and also cameras with PTP remote-control enabled. That's a start point, however DIYers can create very nice projects with that awesome Arduino based board, such rovers controlled by Bluetooth joystick or even another custom project using mouse, keyboard, touch-panel, etc. All this, sending OSD data directly to a video monitor or video transmitter... and much more!

General Features

• open source and open hardware OSD board with integrated USB host;
• both resources are driven by on-board Atmega328p over SPI;
• Arduino compatible;
• serial interface is compatible with FTDI cable;
• voltage input VIN has a switch to enable/disable external power source from (up to 12V);
• 3V3 and 5V exposed from integrated voltage regulators;
• it can be integrated to any project through exposed UART or i2C pins;
• 3 extra digital pins exposed, 2 PWM capable;
• it can drive external peripherals by exposed SPI and the extra digital pins as chip selectors;
• 6 analog pins exposed to read external sensors (i2c clock and data included);

OSD Features

• based on specialized OSD chip Max7456;
• compatible with NTSC or PAL signal;
• provides internal, external and automatic vertical sync;
• LOS, Hsync and ClockOut are exposed;
• video input and output exposed as pin and solder pads.
• Open Code:
  • optimized code to write OSD panels pretty fast;
  • character table can be customized and replaced by using a free editor and a special Arduino sketch;
  • user has total control to enable/disable specific panels, change its location and everything else.

USB Host Features

• based on specialized USB host chip Max3421;
• compatible with Arduino USB host shield and PTP libraries (from circuitsathome.com);
• Open Code:
  • current firmware shows you how to control PowerShot digital cameras from Canon with PTP remote-control enabled;
  • the PTP library have examples to control Canon EOS cams and even Nikon cams which have the standard PTP remote-control enabled;
  • customers can integrate it with other peripherals, such as bluetooth joysticks, midi interfaces and others. All that is possible by using the USB host shield libraries.